Hi all. Love these boards. Always so helpful. My question is...we are doing an addition where we will put on a 6 foot deep front porch along the front of our house. We had planned on putting a recessed light right over the front door with 2 others spaced 6 or so feet apart continuing down in front of our dining room windows. We are just wondering if we should also put a fixture on either side of the door or just one on the one side of the door. Do you think it would look okay with just the recessed lights? We will have a recessed light over each of the garage doors and fixtures on either side of the garage (not on the front by the recessed lights because of decorative brackets) Appreciate any thoughts.

Regardless of lighting, no sidelights. Yeah, I know the plan shows them, but that's a modification we'll be making. I checked on the porch roof: 9' high. Tall enough to manage the door and a transom. Bugs are no problem if you use a yellow light bulb. Well, a red light does the trick too, but red shines an odd color, while a yellow looks fine. Bugs are also less of a problem if you mount your light fixture 18" or so away from the door -- if you put the light fixture right next to the door, bugs come in the house. I hadn't considered the potential problem of a wall-mounted light fixture BEHIND the door /the door hitting it as it's opened ... but, yeah, I don't need a broken glass door ... that's the type of detail I like to learn from this board, and I think it makes up my mind about one vs. two. I also hadn't considered anyone banging his or her head on the light fixture. Since I'm not quite 5' tall, my own head is completely bang-free. Regardless, light fixtures should be just above eye level, so a person would have to be standing awfully close to the wall /in an awkward position to run into it. I am leaning towards a single smaller lantern now. I like the picture above of the narrow lanterns, but I also think that narrow look only works if they're in pairs. I'm going to look at some pictures and see if I can prove or disprove this theory. I think the article I read -- which recommended lanterns 1/2-1/3 the door height was aimmed at a different style house ... or was just off-base. My current house light fixtures (wall mounted) are not that big, and I don't find them too small ... but, you know, the article said that most people have undersized lighting, and it made me wonder if I'm out of the loop on this topic. Thanks again, all.

hmmm i agree on the idea of using what you have with those diagonal posts. one thing i think we all need to see is how the house would look like without the landscape covering up the front as it is hard to tell when we only have the 1 photo , if you do decide to remove the landscape it would give us all a better picture of how the facade would look and what may compliment it.

We have a storm door with a full pane of glass. It allows you to see our lovely door, but lack of a crossbar in the Middle means fingerprints unless you are super careful to just touch the frame. When the screen is in, lack if a crossbar in the middle means you risk stretching or tearing the screen. Also, we have these plastic things that hold the screen or storm in. You can see manufacturer videos about how easy it is to switch, but the plastic has no pliabilty so it's such a miserable job, we often leave the storm in all year. We haven't put the screen in yet, despite tempsin the 90s a week or so ago. So, chech how easy it is to swap screen and storm and in person, not just on a video.